george
Well, I'm pleased to hear you are relaxed and that the threat from Enlightenment Radicals now recedes.
Otherwise, I agree with nothing you've just said.
I've never seen such partisan divisiveness as is evident presently in your country. And it ain't just me making the observation or claim...it is the consensus of good people in both parties who've been working in your government for decades.
As to how America is considered outside of America, poll after poll uniformly and without exception describes a broad and downward change of view, worsening every time a new poll is done.
What dangers might arise for the American Experiment? You could lose a city and everyone in it. That's possible, if unlikely. You could suffer serious economic turmoil, along with the rest of the world, from disruption of energy supplies. You could suffer a serious diminishment of your status as most wealthy and most powerful nation through changes in the balance of various factors - not right now, but fairly soon. You could face on-going and increasing costly attacks on your interests around the world, probably now likely. You could suffer the consequences, in a decade and following, of climate-change caused disorganization.
What is not at risk from any external source or agency is the loss of your sovereignty. You aren't going to be overtaken, nor is any European nation, by hordes of people with questionable racial/cultural/ideological characteristics bearing superior weaponry or tactics.
So if you fucck up and chuck out the Radical Enlightenment experiment that your nation represents, you are going to do it to yourselves in your notions of how you fit in the world and how you respond to changes. And you might do this, good intentions notwithstanding.
You aren't going to buy this, but I don't care. It needs to fall into this conversation. Suskind wrote a very astute passage in his new book on the way dictators function.
Quote:We have a policy against terrorists, but not what might be called a dictator policy.
Save for a single unifying issue: by the fall of 2003, George W. Bush had assumed extraordinary powers to try to force various dictators to give up theirs... These changes make a dictator's traditional challenge of never "losing face" even thornier. Because their power grows from personality, duly enforced, "face" is everything. They must never be irrefutably bested by another country's champion - and, especially, of late, not bested by the "crusader" George W. Bush.
Now, it takes a pretty dull fellow to not see the parallel with how Bush himself and his administration follow this same trajectory themselves. Do not admit error. Do not allow criticism. Never, ever allow yourself, your party, your administration to "lose face".
You won't buy that, as I said. Nor will you accept as accurate what I've writter in the paragraphs above regardless of what stats I might bring to the discussion, or regardless of what commentary or argument I might bring. All is well...now is not importantly different from any other time...you hold those notions to be axiomatic.
